- 2 days ago
You'll never look at a light switch the same way again.
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VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS :
0:00 The Apprentice Lineman
3:12 The Journeyman Lineman
5:23 The Substation Technician
8:00 The System Operator
10:26 The Transmission Engineer
12:56 The Plant Manager
15:18 The Utility Executive
17:45 The CEO
20:45 The Regulator
23:08 The Architect Of The Grid
☕ Support the channel & suggest my next video idea: https://ko-fi.com/masterpov
VIDEO TOPICS/TIMESTAMPS :
0:00 The Apprentice Lineman
3:12 The Journeyman Lineman
5:23 The Substation Technician
8:00 The System Operator
10:26 The Transmission Engineer
12:56 The Plant Manager
15:18 The Utility Executive
17:45 The CEO
20:45 The Regulator
23:08 The Architect Of The Grid
Category
📚
LearningTranscript
00:00Level 1. The Apprentice Lineman
00:02You are 22 years old. You signed up for a four-year apprenticeship program at the local electrical utility.
00:09Your father worked construction. Your uncle worked the mines.
00:13This is the first job in your family that comes with benefits and a pension.
00:17You show up on your first day at 5.30 in the morning. The sun is not up yet.
00:22The yard smells like diesel and wet gravel.
00:26Your foreman hands you a hard hat and a pair of leather gloves that still have the price tag attached.
00:31He points at a truck and tells you to get in.
00:34You don't ask questions.
00:36You have been told not to ask questions for the first six months.
00:39Your job is to watch and to carry things.
00:42The truck drives out to a rural road where a storm knocked down a pole the night before.
00:47The lines are down. A family has been without power for 14 hours.
00:53You stand at the bottom of the pole and hand tools up to the journeyman who is 40 feet above
00:57you.
00:58He doesn't look down when he asks for things. He just extends his hand.
01:02If you give him the wrong tool, he throws it back at you.
01:06You learn the names of everything fast.
01:09A hot stick is not a stick.
01:11A pothead is not a head.
01:13A recloser is not what it sounds like.
01:16The language of the trade is its own dialect.
01:19It was invented by men who have been dead for 50 years.
01:23It was passed down on job sites where classrooms would get people killed.
01:28You study at night.
01:29You attend classes two evenings a week at the community college.
01:33You learn about transformers.
01:35You learn about phase rotation.
01:37You learn the difference between primary and secondary distribution.
01:41You learn that electricity does not want to hurt you.
01:44It just doesn't care if it does.
01:47You see your first close call three months in.
01:50A journeyman loses his grip on a hot stick while working a 13,000 volt line.
01:55The stick swings.
01:57It comes within six inches of touching his forearm.
02:00He climbs down, shaking.
02:02He doesn't talk for an hour.
02:04You understand then what this job actually is.
02:07It is a career built on the assumption that your attention will never slip.
02:12Not once.
02:13Not ever.
02:15You go home that night and you stare at the ceiling.
02:18You cannot sleep.
02:20You keep seeing the stick swinging.
02:22You keep thinking about his two kids and his pregnant wife.
02:26You show up the next morning anyway.
02:29That is the first test of this trade.
02:31Showing up after the fear has settled in.
02:35The older guys watch you carefully those first weeks.
02:38They are not being cruel.
02:39They are measuring you.
02:41They need to know if you will freeze in a crisis.
02:44They need to know if you will panic when a pole is swaying.
02:47They need to know if you will tell the truth when you make a mistake.
02:51You make mistakes.
02:53Everyone does.
02:54You strip a wire wrong.
02:56You tie a knot that slips.
02:58You forget to ground a conductor before you touch it.
03:01And an older journeyman grabs your wrist hard enough to leave a bruise.
03:05He doesn't yell.
03:06He just looks at you.
03:08You will remember that look for the rest of your career.
03:12Level 2.
03:12The journeyman lineman.
03:14Four years later, you passed your certification.
03:17You are a journeyman now.
03:18The apprentice sticker comes off your hard hat.
03:21You get a raise that almost doubles your salary.
03:23You also get a new kind of responsibility.
03:26You are the one in the bucket now.
03:28You are the one the apprentices watch.
03:30You are the one making decisions that will bring power back to 3,000 customers
03:34or kill someone by the end of the shift.
03:37You work in all weather.
03:39That is the part the brochures don't mention.
03:41When a hurricane hits the coast, you drive toward it.
03:44When an ice storm takes down 200 poles across three counties,
03:48you are on the road for 72 hours straight.
03:51You sleep in your truck.
03:52You eat cold sandwiches.
03:54You come home with burns on your hands from ropes pulled too fast.
03:58Your ribs are bruised from the belt that carried you for 18 hours.
04:02Your wife gets used to you disappearing.
04:04She gets used to phone calls that end abruptly because the radio crackled.
04:07She gets used to sleeping alone for weeks at a time during storm season.
04:11You are making good money now.
04:13You bought a house.
04:15You have two kids.
04:16You coach Little League when the weather cooperates.
04:19You carry a pager even on your days off.
04:21You learn how to climb with hooks.
04:23You learn how to switch out a 50,000-pound transformer while it is still hanging from a pole.
04:28You learn how to work live.
04:31Working live means the line is energized.
04:33You are handling wires that carry enough voltage to vaporize the moisture in your body in less than a second.
04:39Your protective equipment is the only thing between you and death.
04:42You inspect it obsessively.
04:44A tear in a rubber glove can end your career and your life in the same instant.
04:48You have been to two funerals for guys you worked with.
04:51One fell.
04:53One got electrocuted.
04:54Both had families.
04:56Both had kids who were growing up without them.
04:58You think about them every time you strap in.
05:01Then you push the thought away.
05:03The job has to get done.
05:05You mentor an apprentice of your own now.
05:07He is 23 years old.
05:09He reminds you of yourself at that age.
05:11Scared.
05:12Eager.
05:13Trying to hide both.
05:15You tell him what your journeyman told you.
05:17The lines don't care how good you think you are.
05:20Respect them or they will teach you to respect them.
05:23Level 3.
05:24The substation technician.
05:26You took a test.
05:27You transferred out of the line crew and into the substation department.
05:31The work is different.
05:33The pay is similar.
05:34The risk is arguably higher because the voltages are higher.
05:39A distribution line carries 13,000 volts.
05:42A substation handles 230,000 volts or more.
05:47At those levels, electricity will arc through the air to reach you from several feet away.
05:51You don't touch anything without knowing exactly what you are doing.
05:55A substation is a yard full of transformers, switches, breakers, and control equipment.
06:01It steps down transmission voltage to distribution voltage.
06:05Every town has one.
06:06Every city has dozens.
06:08They are the quiet brick buildings behind chain-link fences that nobody ever looks at.
06:14Inside them is the machinery that runs civilization.
06:17Your job is to maintain that machinery.
06:20You run tests on transformers to check their insulating oil for contamination.
06:24You replace batteries in the control systems.
06:27You troubleshoot breakers that refuse to trip during fault conditions.
06:31You work with relays that are older than you are and relays that were installed last month.
06:36You read schematics that fold out to the size of a bedsheet.
06:39You learn to trace a circuit through 40 pages of drawings without getting lost.
06:44You wear arc flash protection when you switch.
06:47Arc flash protection looks like a space suit.
06:49A full hood.
06:51A full suit.
06:52Gloves rated to 40 calories per square centimeter.
06:55If a breaker fails during operation, the fireball it creates can reach 35,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
07:02That is hotter than the surface of the sun.
07:04Your suit might save you.
07:06It might not.
07:07You switch anyway, because somebody has to.
07:11You work holidays.
07:12You work Christmas Eve when a squirrel gets into a substation and blacks out 20,000 homes.
07:17You work 3 a.m. on a Tuesday when a transformer fails and the entire southern half of the county
07:23goes dark.
07:24You do it quietly.
07:26You do it without being thanked.
07:28Most people have no idea you exist.
07:30They only know that their lights turn back on.
07:33One night in February, you are out in a yard during a blizzard.
07:37The wind is blowing sideways at 40 miles per hour.
07:40You are trying to bypass a failed breaker to restore service to a hospital.
07:44Your hands are numb inside your gloves.
07:47The snow is so thick you can barely see your own hand.
07:50You work by feel.
07:52You close the switch.
07:54The lights come back on across town.
07:56You drive home in silence and you don't tell anyone what you did.
08:00Level 4.
08:01The system operator.
08:03You got promoted inside.
08:05You walked away from the field.
08:06You now work in a windowless room in a hardened building in the middle of the state.
08:12The building has blast-resistant walls.
08:14It has backup generators.
08:16It has a roof covered in antennas.
08:18This is the control center.
08:20This is where the grid is actually run.
08:23You sit in front of six monitors.
08:26One shows a map of every substation, every transmission line, every generator in your territory.
08:32One shows weather.
08:34One shows real-time load.
08:35One shows system frequency, which should be exactly 60 hertz.
08:40If it drifts even a little, something has gone wrong.
08:44Your job is to watch everything.
08:46For 12 hours at a time, you watch.
08:49You drink coffee that tastes like it was made in 1987.
08:53You eat sandwiches out of a vending machine.
08:55You don't leave your chair except to use the bathroom.
08:58The grid doesn't stop.
09:00Power flows through it every second of every day.
09:04Somebody has to be there to make decisions when something goes wrong.
09:08When a generator trips offline, you have four seconds to decide what to do.
09:12If you wait longer, the frequency starts dropping and the whole system begins to destabilize.
09:18You issue orders over the radio to line crews in the field.
09:22You coordinate with operators in neighboring regions.
09:25You direct switching operations at substations hundreds of miles away.
09:29You learn to make decisions under pressure that would paralyze most people.
09:33During the heat wave in your third summer, the load on your system hit an all-time record at four
09:38in the afternoon.
09:40A generator tripped.
09:41Another one tripped 90 seconds later.
09:44You shed 200 megawatts of load in 12 seconds by ordering rolling blackouts in three cities.
09:5150,000 people lost power for an hour.
09:54You kept the grid up.
09:56Nobody thanked you.
09:58Nobody knew it happened.
10:00That is what the job is.
10:02You prevent disasters that nobody will ever hear about.
10:06You also carry the weight of the near misses nobody ever heard about.
10:09The night the wildfire was three miles from your biggest transmission corridor.
10:14The morning the cyber alert flashed red and then green again in the same minute.
10:19You keep those memories to yourself.
10:22Your wife knows your shifts.
10:23She does not know what happens inside them.
10:26Level 5.
10:27The transmission engineer.
10:29You went back to school while you were working.
10:32You got your engineering degree at night.
10:34You spent eight years in the operations center.
10:36And then you moved into engineering.
10:38You wear a button-down shirt now instead of coveralls.
10:42You sit in a cubicle instead of a control room.
10:45The work is different in every way except the one that matters.
10:49You are still responsible for keeping the lights on.
10:52You plan the grid.
10:54That is your job description in five words.
10:57You study load growth projections from 5, 10, 20 years in the future.
11:02You figure out where new transmission lines need to be built.
11:05You calculate how much capacity each corridor can handle.
11:09You model what happens when the biggest generator in the state fails on the hottest day of the year.
11:15You run thousands of simulations.
11:17Your software predicts scenarios that might happen once in a century.
11:21You design the system to survive them.
11:24You work with planners from other utilities because the grid is not actually a single grid.
11:30It is a patchwork of interconnected systems that must cooperate to function.
11:34The eastern interconnection stretches from Florida to Nova Scotia.
11:38The western interconnection covers everything from the Rockies to the Pacific.
11:43These systems are synchronized to within a fraction of a second across thousands of miles.
11:47The engineering required to make that happen is staggering.
11:52You contribute a small piece to it.
11:54Every line you plan.
11:56Every substation you design.
11:58Every study you run.
12:00It all feeds into a machine that has to work perfectly every second of every day.
12:05That machine is the foundation of human civilization until something replaces it.
12:11You attend meetings with regulators.
12:13You testify before public utility commissions about rate cases.
12:17You explain to people in suits why a $400 million transmission project is necessary.
12:23They ask hard questions.
12:25You answer them with graphs and charts and probability distributions.
12:30Sometimes they approve the project.
12:32Sometimes they don't.
12:33When they don't, you know that somewhere down the line, there will be a blackout that could have been prevented.
12:39You keep a list of those projects in a drawer.
12:41You don't show it to anyone.
12:44You go to the annual industry conference in Denver.
12:47You sit in sessions with engineers from every major utility in the country.
12:51Everyone is facing the same problems.
12:54Nobody has solved them yet.
12:56Level 6.
12:57The plant manager.
12:59They moved you to a generating station.
13:01A 1,200 megawatt coal-fired plant on a river in the middle of the state.
13:06Four massive cooling towers.
13:08A smokestack 800 feet tall.
13:11A rail yard that receives 120 railcars of coal every day.
13:15This plant powers a million homes by itself.
13:18And you are responsible for every inch of it.
13:21You have 300 employees reporting to you.
13:24Operators, mechanics, electricians, instrument technicians, control room staff, environmental compliance officers, safety coordinators.
13:32You know most of them by name.
13:35You know which ones have kids.
13:37You know which ones are recovering from surgery.
13:39You know which ones are retiring in six months.
13:42You know which ones are too young to know how much they don't know yet.
13:45You walk the plant every morning.
13:47You climb onto the boiler deck and feel the heat through your boots.
13:51You go down to the turbine floor and listen for anything that sounds wrong.
13:54The plant has a sound.
13:56A steady low hum made up of a thousand different components vibrating at their correct frequencies.
14:02You have trained your ears to hear any deviation.
14:05A bearing starting to fail sounds different from a bearing running clean.
14:09A steam leak sounds different from normal background noise.
14:12You catch problems that instruments miss because you have walked these floors for 20 years.
14:17You manage the production schedule.
14:19You coordinate with the system operator about when your units will come online and when they will be offline.
14:24You balance the cost of running against the cost of not running.
14:28You negotiate with the union.
14:30You fire people when you have to.
14:32You promote people when you can.
14:34You attend safety meetings every Monday at 6 a.m.
14:37and you talk about the incidents from last week.
14:39Close calls, near misses, injuries.
14:42A man lost two fingers to a coupling last month.
14:45You were in the hospital with him before his wife arrived.
14:48You held his other hand.
14:50You didn't say much.
14:51There was nothing useful to say.
14:53You also know this plant is living on borrowed time.
14:56The state passed a clean energy mandate three years ago.
14:59Coal plants are being retired across the country.
15:02Yours will be next.
15:03You have three years, maybe five.
15:06Then 300 families will lose their jobs.
15:09You already know which ones will land on their feet.
15:12You already know which ones won't.
15:14You carry that knowledge quietly.
15:16You don't tell them yet.
15:17Level seven, the utility executive.
15:21You made it to the corporate office, 27th floor, a window that looks out over the city,
15:26a secretary outside your door.
15:29Your title is vice president of operations.
15:32You oversee the entire generation and transmission fleet for a company that serves four million customers across three states.
15:39Your decisions affect millions of lives.
15:42Most of them will never know your name.
15:44Your calendar is booked solid from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m.
15:49You are in meetings constantly.
15:51Budget meetings, strategy meetings, regulatory meetings, board meetings, investor calls, community outreach events.
15:59You speak in acronyms that nobody outside the industry would understand.
16:03I-S-O-R-T-O, F-E-R-C, N-E-R-C, P-U-C, I-R-P.
16:09You haven't touched a pair of climbing hooks in 25 years, but you remember.
16:14You remember the cold mornings in the bucket.
16:17You remember the smell of burning insulation.
16:20You remember the funerals.
16:22Those memories inform every decision you make.
16:24When the controller comes in with a proposal to cut the maintenance budget by 8%, you say no.
16:30You say no even though it would make the quarterly numbers look better.
16:34You say no because you know what happens when maintenance gets deferred.
16:38Every dollar saved on inspections today becomes $10 of emergency repair tomorrow.
16:44Or worse, it becomes a widow and an orphan.
16:47Your CEO respects you for that.
16:50Your CFO resents you for it.
16:52The board is split.
16:53You have allies and enemies inside the company.
16:57The alliances shift depending on the quarter.
16:59You deal with politicians.
17:01The governor calls you when a storm is coming.
17:04The senators call you when a bill is moving through committee.
17:07The mayors call you when their city is unhappy about rates.
17:10You answer every call.
17:12You treat every one of them like the most important conversation of your day.
17:16You never know which one will be.
17:18You have a driver now.
17:20You didn't want one.
17:21The company insisted.
17:23You use the time in the car to read reports and return emails.
17:27You stare out the window at neighborhoods full of houses with their lights on.
17:31You think about how fragile it all really is.
17:34Your daughter calls you on the drive home one evening.
17:36She wants to know why you missed her recital again.
17:39You apologize.
17:40You promise you will make the next one.
17:43You already know you won't.
17:45Level 8.
17:46The CEO.
17:48The old CEO retired.
17:49The board picked you.
17:51You are 58 years old.
17:53You have spent 36 years at this company.
17:56You have the corner office now.
17:58You have the compensation package.
18:00You have the stock options.
18:01You also have the weight of everything.
18:04You run a publicly traded utility with a market capitalization of $30 billion.
18:10Your operational territory covers 85,000 square miles.
18:14You are responsible for 11,000 employees and their families.
18:19You are responsible for 6 million customers who flip a switch every morning without thinking about it.
18:24You report to shareholders every quarter.
18:27You report to regulators every month.
18:30You report to the press constantly, whether you want to or not.
18:34Every decision you make is scrutinized.
18:37You approved a $12 billion capital plan last year.
18:40Most of it is going into grid modernization.
18:43Replacing aging transformers.
18:45Upgrading transmission lines.
18:47Hardening substations against storms.
18:50Building out the fiber network that will allow the grid to become smarter.
18:53You know this investment is necessary.
18:56You also know it will raise rates.
18:59You will be hated for raising rates.
19:01You will testify before angry city councils.
19:04You will be attacked by consumer advocates on the evening news.
19:08You will answer their questions patiently and factually.
19:11They will never be satisfied.
19:13Nobody wants to pay more for electricity.
19:16The grid is under attack.
19:18Not metaphorically.
19:20Actually.
19:20Every day, state-sponsored hackers probe your networks looking for vulnerabilities.
19:26Your cybersecurity team intercepts thousands of attempts per week.
19:30Most of them are routine.
19:32A few each year are serious.
19:34You have briefings with the FBI.
19:36You have briefings with the Department of Energy.
19:39You have briefings with the National Security Agency.
19:41You are not supposed to talk about what is discussed in those rooms.
19:45You don't.
19:47You have also started thinking about the climate problem in ways that keep you awake at night.
19:51The fleet you inherited runs on coal and gas.
19:55The world is moving away from both.
19:57You have to retire plants.
19:59You have to build renewables.
20:01You have to plan for an energy transition that has never been attempted at this scale in human history.
20:07Nobody has a roadmap.
20:09You are writing one.
20:10One decision at a time.
20:12Half your decisions will look wrong in 20 years.
20:15You won't know which half until it is too late to change them.
20:18You visit a line crew in the field one afternoon.
20:21It is the first time in two years.
20:24You stand in the mud next to a bucket truck.
20:26A young apprentice looks at you without recognition.
20:29The journeyman shakes your hand and doesn't say much.
20:32You drive back to the city in silence.
20:35You remember being that apprentice.
20:36You remember what it smelled like to be in the bucket in the rain.
20:40That memory is more real to you than the boardroom you will walk into tomorrow.
20:45Level 9.
20:46The regulator.
20:48You took early retirement from the utility.
20:50Two years later, the governor appointed you to the State Public Utility Commission.
20:54You are one of five commissioners now.
20:56You oversee every investor-owned utility in the state.
21:00You set the rates.
21:01You approve the capital plans.
21:03You enforce the reliability standards.
21:06You decide who gets to build what and who pays for it.
21:09The power you hold in this role is enormous.
21:13Billions of dollars in infrastructure decisions flow through your office.
21:16Every utility in the state wants something from you.
21:19Every consumer advocacy group wants something from you.
21:23Every clean energy organization wants something from you.
21:26Every manufacturer that uses industrial electricity wants something from you.
21:31They all send lobbyists.
21:33They all send lawyers.
21:34They all send experts to testify in your hearings.
21:37You sit through hearings that last 10 hours.
21:40You read filings that run 4,000 pages.
21:43You listen to testimony from engineers, economists, environmental scientists, and ordinary citizens.
21:50Some of those citizens drove three hours to tell you their electricity bill went up $15 a month.
21:55You listen to all of them.
21:57You have to.
21:58They deserve to be heard.
22:00You write decisions that will shape the energy future of your state for decades.
22:04You approve some rate increases.
22:06You deny others.
22:08You mandate renewable energy standards.
22:10You penalize utilities that fail to meet reliability metrics.
22:14You set the rules for interconnecting rooftop solar.
22:17You decide whether electric vehicles will be supported or taxed.
22:21You coordinate with neighboring states.
22:23Grids don't respect borders.
22:25A decision made in your state affects five others.
22:29You sit on national committees.
22:30You fly to Washington six times a year for meetings with FERC.
22:34FERC is the federal commission that oversees interstate transmission.
22:39You have coffee with commissioners from other states, and you compare notes.
22:43Everyone is facing the same problems.
22:46Aging infrastructure.
22:47Rising demand.
22:48Climate pressure.
22:50Political pressure.
22:51Cyber security threats.
22:52Nobody has solved any of it.
22:55You are all doing your best.
22:57You get threats in the mail sometimes.
22:59A rate increase you approved sent someone over the edge.
23:02The state police opened a file.
23:04You don't tell your wife.
23:06You change your commute.
23:08You keep doing the work.
23:09Level 10.
23:10The architect of the grid.
23:12You retired from the commission eight years ago.
23:15But retirement in this industry is a fiction.
23:18You serve on three boards now.
23:20You consult for two foreign governments.
23:22You advise a think tank in Washington.
23:25You write op-eds that get quoted in the Wall Street Journal.
23:28You speak at conferences around the world.
23:31You are 74 years old.
23:33Your hair is white.
23:35Your hands ache when the weather changes.
23:37Your knees ache always.
23:39You are one of maybe 30 people on Earth
23:42who truly understand how the modern power grid works.
23:45Not the politics of it.
23:47Not the economics.
23:48The actual, physical, engineered reality of it.
23:52The thing itself.
23:54You remember when the grid was simpler.
23:56You remember when it was just utilities
23:58serving captive customers in defined territories.
24:01You remember when every plant was thermal
24:04and every load was predictable.
24:06That grid is gone.
24:07The grid today is a living organism
24:10and it changes every hour of every day.
24:13Millions of solar panels feed power backward
24:16through distribution networks
24:17that were never designed to receive it.
24:19Thousands of wind turbines ride the jet stream.
24:22Batteries charge at 3 a.m.
24:24and discharge at 6 p.m.
24:27Electric vehicles are loads one hour
24:29and sources the next.
24:31Data centers consume entire cities' worth of power
24:33and their appetite is only growing.
24:35The old grid was a river.
24:37The new grid is an ocean.
24:40You helped build it.
24:41Not all of it.
24:42Nobody built all of it.
24:44But your fingerprints are on pieces
24:45that connect pieces that connect pieces.
24:48Somewhere out there,
24:49a line you approved carries power
24:51across a state you no longer live in.
24:54You get invited to Washington sometimes.
24:55You sit in rooms with senators and cabinet secretaries.
24:59They ask you what they should do.
25:01You tell them the truth.
25:03The grid is the most important machine
25:05in human civilization.
25:06It is also the most fragile.
25:09A major failure would kill millions of people.
25:12Not from the blackout itself,
25:13from the collapse of everything downstream.
25:16Water treatment.
25:17Hospitals.
25:18Food supply.
25:20Fuel distribution.
25:21Communications.
25:22The modern world is built on top of a machine
25:25that most people will never understand.
25:27The people who understand it are aging out,
25:30one retirement at a time,
25:31faster than we are replacing them.
25:33You worry about who is coming next.
25:35You mentor young engineers.
25:38You push for better training programs.
25:40You fund scholarships in your own name,
25:42though you insisted the university
25:44keep the naming quiet.
25:45You know that the knowledge you carry
25:47took 50 years to accumulate.
25:49It cannot be handed off
25:51in a single conversation.
25:52You carry memories of men
25:54who climbed poles in the 1970s.
25:56Men who are dead now.
25:58Men who taught you when you were 22.
26:01You are the last link in a chain
26:03that goes back over a century.
26:04When you go,
26:05something goes with you.
26:07You sit on your back porch in the evening,
26:09and you watch the sun set over the ridge.
26:12The lights come on in your neighborhood
26:13one by one.
26:15Most people don't notice.
26:16You notice.
26:17You always notice.
26:19Every bold is the end of a wire,
26:21and every wire is the end of a journey
26:24you traced a thousand different ways.
26:26You think about your grandchildren tonight.
26:28They have never known a world without electricity.
26:31They have never known a world
26:32without reliable power at any hour.
26:35They will never understand
26:36what it took to build that world.
26:38And maybe that is the highest compliment
26:40the grid could ever receive.
26:42The fact that it disappears
26:43into the background of a child's life.
26:45The fact that it becomes invisible
26:47because it works.
26:48You made it invisible.
26:50That was the whole point.
26:52Somewhere in a training yard right now,
26:54a 22-year-old apprentice
26:55is putting on a hard hat for the first time.
26:57He doesn't know anything yet.
26:59He doesn't know what this work
27:01will cost him or give him.
27:02He will learn.
27:03They always do.
27:05The cycle continues.
27:06He says,
27:09He doesn't know anything.
27:10You
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